Fragments
by The Duchess Of The Dark
Summary: Wolverine & Raven - one shot. Memories are a strange thing for Logan & Helena, fragments of past broken? lives and unknowable futures. Inspired by the new Origins movie. Ties in with my other X-men movieverse fics.


He's dreaming again. Or should I say, he's having a nightmare again. Nothing unusual in that for the pair of us, really. We've both got memories like colanders – not that we're forgetful, just our recollections are full of holes. This time it's me being woken up, the sound of tearing bed sheets loud in my ears as his claws pop out. Costs a fortune in bed linen some months. Baby, we need new sheets. Again. I block the down swipe of his elbow with a quick slice of TK and lay my hand on his forehead.

"Logan, love, calm down." I keep my voice soft and soothing, tightening my mental shields against the images of war and bloodshed. "There's nobody for you to fight right now."

This time it looks like Vietnam, I think. An image flashes up in my mind's eye and I flinch reflexively. He shouts a bit, then sits bolt upright, finally waking with a grunt. Sweat beads his brow, I can smell the dream emotion in it. Seeing I'm awake, he swears and scrubs at his face with his large hands, unconsciously rubbing at his knuckles.

"New sheets?" he rumbles.

"Yep," I confirm, yawning.

I sense one of the kids stirring three doors down and send a swift telepathic nudge. Willingly, Hugh drops back into sleep. His powers are proving problematic at the minute and he doesn't sleep very well. Join the club, sunshine. Logan's yawn echoes mine and he glances at the alarm clock on the dresser. It's 4am, picked out in neon green in the darkness. We had to stop keeping it by the bedside after we went through three in a month. Two sets of claws and an unfortunate tendency to telekinetically swipe at anything that disturbs sleep is a pain in the arse.

"Hmph... "

"Logan...," I begin, then shake my head.

I don't know if I can go there, I'm probably mistaken. At least, I hope I am. After all, it was just a glimpse of a nightmare filtered through adamantium.

"What, darlin'?" he asks, cocking his head, an eyebrow quirking.

He studies my expression, nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly as he samples my scent. You can tell a lot by scent, if your sense of smell is as good as ours.

"Yer got somethin' from me." He's not asking. He knows.

"Yes, no... maybe." I break off and scowl. "Bloody hell, I wish Charles was here."

Logan cups my chin in his hand and gives me that look. The one that says, don't go there, don't relive the terror of Phoenix and the deaths of so many. Being the only ones who could get near the terrible female thing that used to be Jean Grey has given us one more nightmare to add to the collection. And three more empty seats in the dinner hall, three more aching voids in our souls. This is our curse – the curse of all mutants with advanced healing factors. We don't age and we're pretty much unkillable, especially those of us who've been augmented. You can shoot, stab, burn, poison, freeze, drown and strangle us and we still coming crawling, clawing back. Nothing short of lengthy decapitation works. Great if you end up eyebrow deep in shit like we often do. But we feel pain, we suffer, we mourn our losses. Our hearts aren't indestructible.

The Phoenix tore the flesh from our bones as we struggled up that slope to kill her. She peeled us like overripe oranges. I temporarily lost my left eye. Apparently they grow back too. I can't get the look in her eyes out of my head. She was grateful when we buried our claws in her chest. I realised afterwards we were both crying. She spoke to me as we punctured her heart, adamantium blades slicing through sternum, ribs and lung tissue. Not verbally, but in my mind, telepath to telepath. She thanked us for doing what others couldn't and apologised for trying to take Logan away from me. In the Grand Guginol horror of those few days, she chose this to apologise for? She'd almost put him through the medbay wall when he refused her. He'd recoiled in horror as his belt buckle had come undone of its own accord, bodily dragged to her by irresistible telekinesis. When I charged in, sensing his emotions through our bond, she'd been crouched over him like some sort of succubus, dabbling her fingers in the blood on the floor. Then she turned on me, nothing of my friend Jean left in her.

I shudder and firmly push past horrors aside.

"It was the war."

"Which one?"

We know he's been through a fair few. Last few years dribs and drabs of memory have started returning, especially since the Stryker business. So far as we can tell, we've both been through more than one. I have dreams of desert warfare, of irritating sand and wailing prayers over white dunes, scud missiles and UN uniforms. The Gulf, I think.

"Vietnam."

He grins in the darkness, teeth suddenly flashing, trying to break the dark mood. "Did I have bad hair?"

I smile and ruffle his wayward spikes that resist all attempts at grooming. "Love, you've always had singular style."

He chuckles and rubs his beard on my cheek, flopping onto his back, tugging me down with him. I nestle into the hollow of his shoulder, automatically inhaling his scent. He waits for me to speak again, hand resting at my hip, thumb tracing the curve.

"Victor Creed was with you. You were fighting side by side. He called you Jimmy."

Creed. The feral type mutant gone insane. The black-eyed killing machine who doesn't just kill, he _likes_ to kill, lives for it. The monstrous animal every feral fears becoming. The Big Hairy Fucker, as Logan automatically subtitles him. The creature who killed Elliot, made a sport of it. Snapped his neck right in front of my face 'cos he knew by hurting me he'd hurt Logan. Knows he's not much chance of killing me while I've got adamantium, so he went for second best. Creed knows Logan's past and for some reason wants nothing more than to hurt him. From the glimpses I've had inside his sick mind, I know it. I'd like twenty four hours to trawl his brain before I... we... kill him. There'll be no trial, no handing him over to Nicolas Fury to rot in a S.H.I.E.L.D cell, no mind-wipe and rehabilitation by well-meaning telepaths. The Prof would probably insist on the latter, if not the former, but, well, he's not here anymore. Killed by one of his own. Does intending to decapitate Sabretooth so he can't regenerate make us as bad as him? I don't know anymore.

Logan exhales quietly, breath warm, stirring the hair at the crown of my head. He's thinking so hard that even if I weren't a telepath I could hear the cogs whirring. Contrary to what some may think, my beloved isn't a vicious, poorly-educated man. Far from it. I listen to his heart. It's sped up very slightly, as it always does when he chews these things over.

"I've been thinkin'," he says eventually. "I think, though I don't goddamn like it much, that me 'n the B.H.F might be related."

I sit up straight so quickly the bedsprings creak, my eyes going wide. "How...? You don't look much alike."

Bloody hell. I've not considered that. But when you're as old as Logan seems to be, lots of things become possible. Creed knows me too. And I mean before he appeared out of the snowstorm back in Canada when the X-men came jetting in to save us. He looked at me like he wanted to screw and dismember me all at the same time. Makes me shiver just recalling that look he gave me when I faced him in the white out. I sometimes wonder if we _all_ knew each other, before our memories were scrambled like so much egg. The initial set of numbers on Logan's tags is identical to mine. If we did, what were we to each other? Fellow soldiers? Enemies? Lovers?

I try not to think about the last option too much, just in case I was ever sick and twisted enough to let Creed jump up on my bed. I'd like to think I wasn't like that, but truth is, I just don't know. The only scrap of anything linking me to my former life is a ten minute snippet of shitty security footage showing me freeing captives at Alkali Lake facility. I killed fifteen soldiers in that time, was shot about forty times and still managed to rampage like Weapon X Barbie on crack.

"Dunno," Logan exhales the word reluctantly. "Mebbe siblings? Think I'd recognise any kid o'mine... Leastways, hope I would."

I can't help glancing down at my stomach. My 'washboard' as Jean used to call it, with good-natured envy in her tone. For two muties who heal anything, we can't seem to make a baby ourselves. We've not really discussed it properly. I s'pose we're a bit scared, though we aren't in the habit of admitting we're frightened of anything. What kind of live would it be for a child in this world that hates and fears mutantkind? With two alpha class mutant parents, the odds of a mutant child are very high. There've been enough instances recently when we've 'forgotten' contraception that I really should be pregnant by now. It wouldn't be so bad if I was, but I can't bring myself to wish for it in case I can't, in case whatever's been done to me has robbed me of that too. Super soldiers are no use if they fall pregnant.

"S'okay, darlin'," he murmurs, splayed hand coming to rest on my belly. "It'll happen when the time's right."

I lay my hand on top of his and the pads of his fingers press lightly against the soft cotton pyjama vest I wear. Suddenly my eyes sting and I knuckle them, fiercely.

"Hey," Logan sits up and grabs my shoulders, a dark indent appearing between his brows.

"Think you could be right about Creed," I say softly, reversing the subject. "Who knows what's happened in the past?"

He nods, slowly, knowing not to pursue the baby thing. We have our own peculiar language. Mine is in my shoulders, the set of my jaw and the colour of my eyes, or so Logan says. If I get angry, my eyes go the colour of a stormy sea. He has a whole vocabulary of grunts, growls and popped knuckles that sound like ratchet teeth.

Logan contents himself with kneading the hard plane of my shoulders, scowling a little as he mulls things over. Good job we don't have to worry about frown lines. After a minute or two I relax as his strong fingers work their usual magic. He kisses the nape of my neck and pulls me back against his chest.

"Time fer sleep," he announces, mock gravely. "Somebody's gotta be up ta supervise the kids at breakfast. Think if Hank finds anymore oatmeal in his hair he's gonna turn green."

I smile at that, picturing the erudite Henry McCoy's composure eroding after an impromptu food fight last week. He can roar better than Wolvie when he gets going. I'm sure he's been using product in his blue fur. He worships 'Ro and has been making a special effort since she complimented him a little while back.

We settle down as the clock flips past quarter to five. Staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows lighten towards dawn, I roll over and snuggle into his back, tucking my chin into his shoulder.

'_Who's Silver Fox?' _I ask mentally.

I feel him pause, considering, then shrug, muscle sliding beneath his skin.

'_Dunno, Hels,' _he sends back. _'Why?'_

'_No reason,' _I demure.

'_Ok, get some sleep.'_

With that he drifts off. We both sleep easier together than alone. As I begin to sink, I wonder who this woman is, glimpsed in a split second fragment of recollection. Always it's the fragments, the pieces of memory, smashed like crystal. I'm thankful I'll wake tomorrow and know what we have. One day we might both know what was, but will we be so thankful then?


End file.
